Theatre

Now that she’s forsaken full-blown musicals, Maria Friedman is becoming the Queen of Cabaret. Unfussilly directed by David Babani, Friedman’s solo show is yet another West End transfer for his Menier Chocolate Factory.

The impeccable song book is drawn from such disparate composers as Sondheim and Kate Bush, each of which has been subtly rearranged. There is no classier show in the West End. And I don’t think I’ve ever heard the award-winning Friedman sing better.

After killing himself during a botched robbery, heaven gives him a second chance at redemption. Back on earth, he hits his daughter who learns the lesson her mother has long known, that it is possible for someone to hit you hard and for it not to hurt at all. Really?

A bad back not only caused David Tennant to withdraw from the press night of this RSC Hamlet — first seen in Stratford — but a hasty reshuffling of the pack. Fortinbrass became Lucianus; Lucianus became Gildenstern; Gildenstern played Laertes and Laertes, aka Edward Bennett, replaced Tennant in Shakespeare’s biggest and probably greatest role. So no pressure then, as director Gregory Doran said when he announced the changes to the audience.

It could hardly be said that Trevor Nunn, whose illustrious career includes stints as artistic director of both the National Theatre and the RSC, needs a comeback. But make no mistake, after his previous musical — the awful Gone With the Wind (conspicuously absent from the list of Nunn productions in the programme biography for his latest offering) — Nunn needed this one.

And with this beautiful revival of Stephen Sondheim’s haunting homage to Ingmar Bergman’s film about lovers suspended in a twilight zone of Swedish nights and unfulfilling relationships, Nunn is back on form.

Jasper Rees has joined the Toby Young brand of writing by turning himself into a show. Directed by Harry Burton, his one-man tale is set in post-divorce midlife crisis, the antidote to which is the French horn Rees blew as a boy. Jonathan Guy Lewis plays Rees, and the quirky characters he encounters on his way to redemption, with dishevelled charm.

Tarell Alvin McCraney’s latest offering is populated by style-obsessed transvestites — and is a case of style over substance. Family is McCraney’s theme, but I left Dominic Cooke’s traverse stage production with the lesson that as a subject viewed in isolation from the wider world, sexuality is just not very interesting.

Tracy Letts’s riveting family saga, written for Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, has won a hatful of awards. And it is easy to see why. Letts is the latest chronicler of the American dysfunctional family. Where his drama fails to deliver the emotional punch of, say, O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, it compensates with pitch-dark humour.
The disappearance of the Westons’ alcoholic patriarch triggers a 10-strong family gathering spearheaded by his three lovelorn adult daughters. All have come to support their prescription pill-popping mother, Violet.

Look hard enough and there is an instructive history play here. Unfortunately it is contained within Adriano Shaplin's rambling epic which has been cut to over three hours. Yes, cut.

Two thirds of that time would have been enough to focus on the fascinating themes uncovered by Shaplin's research, the most promising of which is how scientific experiment served as entertainment in the 17th century, when Oliver Cromwell closed the theatres.

There is probably no easier target for a comedian than God. According to Eddie Izzard, if God existed he would have come down during the Nuremberg rallies and decapitated Hitler with a flick of his finger.